even as a pretty casual football fan I could see that Rey Maualuga's name was misspelled. The Oscars questions seemed to be much harder than the football questions. If you're a fan of a football team, you would probably know the last several starting quarterbacks, and the last several coaches, whereas something like the Zellweger question (while being a great piece of trivia) is much tougher in my opinion...

I pretty much agree with everything you said, OMG, and thanks for the feedback. We're learning as we go, particularly about question difficulty --- and we still remind ourselves every week that our show lives and dies by its question writing. It's fun, though, and the stakes aren't that high, and we encourage everybody to have a good time (witness Vamsi and the beer!). At this point, I'm just glad Cliff didn't come at us with a kitchen knife over the Oscar question you referenced!

Alan_B wrote:I pretty much agree with everything you said, OMG, and thanks for the feedback. We're learning as we go, particularly about question difficulty --- and we still remind ourselves every week that our show lives and dies by its question writing. It's fun, though, and the stakes aren't that high, and we encourage everybody to have a good time (witness Vamsi and the beer!). At this point, I'm just glad Cliff didn't come at us with a kitchen knife over the Oscar question you referenced!

This was something Cliff and I were sort of talking about behind your back before you arrived at BQT last night, namely, that knowing Cliff, you already know that he knows the answer to common Oscar trivia that pops up (what two actresses tied for Best Actress...name the only two sequels to win best picture...etc), so the question writing becomes an interesting process on your part.

Yes, Hanzz, we've found that the more we know both the player AND their field, the trickier it is. In your case, I knew you, but I'd never talked about Parks and Rec with you.

We have found ourselves at times, when going over our slates of questions, saying, "But we know he knows that." Then we have to step back and decide if it would be a fair question for somebody we didn't know and if the question is of equivalent difficulty to the other players' questions in that particular round.

The good thing is --- after taping 20 episodes, we're just about finished with people we know, so there's no unfair advantage or disadvantage any more!!

Nicely done, Alan! And fun to see my old buddy (and fellow ToC'er) Cliff Gallaher. I like the mixture of the straight-ahead trivia quiz and mixing it up with game-playing and wagering strategies. I think you've got a hit.

I thought this might be my best game yet, feeling I knew at least a little bit in all three categories.
Well... I certainly was proven correct, knowing only a little bit.
Potter was 2 in the first round, nothing else until oh so close in the "FJ" question. I just guessed

SpoilerShow

an avg of about 550, x7 for 3850, then bumped it another hundred for no particular reason to 3950. Woulda coulda shoulda made it an even 4000.

2 in Robots in round one, then the 4 ptr, then nothing.
1 in P&R in round one, then nothing.

OUCH

Still, good game. I really do love the varied scoring from round to round, quite challenging!

Paucle wrote:I thought this might be my best game yet, feeling I knew at least a little bit in all three categories.
Well... I certainly was proven correct, knowing only a little bit.
Potter was 2 in the first round, nothing else until oh so close in the "FJ" question. I just guessed

SpoilerShow

an avg of about 550, x7 for 3850, then bumped it another hundred for no particular reason to 3950. Woulda coulda shoulda made it an even 4000.

2 in Robots in round one, then the 4 ptr, then nothing.
1 in P&R in round one, then nothing.

I got 3 in HP and 4 in Robots and, as I suspected, a big, fat zero in P&R. I was about as high over the page count as you were under.

Also, the question only asked for make and model of KITT. Why was he then asked to provide the year (which is not a required part of the model)?

Yes, I admit --- that wording -- and the judging surrounding it -- was not our finest hour. (I will say in our defense, though --- we give the contestants all kinds of chances to contest answers and judgment calls, and Richard didn't bring that up. Which I guess is a way of saying that since we didn't go to jail for something, we weren't really guilty of it. Which is an O.J. kind of logic, I admit.)

Great show! I'm really enjoying it. Feel free to use me as a resource if you have any more Bible-related specialists. I think a couple of your New Testament questions were a little problematic.

SpoilerShow

One question in Round One is "What Gospel contains Jesus' exhortation to Peter and Andrew, 'I will make you fishers of men'?" The announcer says the right answer is Matthew. But Mark contains the same exhortation to the identical men in Mark 1:17. Unlike the Matthew passage, Mark refers to "Simon and Andrew" rather than "Simon, called Peter and Andrew." But it's clearly the same two guys. However, the quote in Mark is "I will make you to become fishers of men." So you could claim Mark is a wrong answer on a technicality. I think you probably don't want to set yourself up to split those kinds of hairs.

The same incident is also recounted in Luke. But Luke only mentions Simon, not Andrew, as the recipient of the exhortation, and the phrasing is "Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men" (Luke 5:10). So Luke is a wrong answer on couple of technicalities--he doesn't mention that Andrew was also addressed, and he writes "thou shalt catch men" rather than "I will make you fishers of men." Asking a contestant to remember minor variations in wording across three different tellings of the same story is probably a little more subtle than is fair.

Fortunately, the contestant guessed "John", the one unequivocally wrong answer of the four possible.

Another small problem in Round One is the claim that the word "Hallelujah" does not occur in the King James Bible. That's really a matter of orthography and transliteration. The original 1611 edition of the KJV spelled that word as "Alleluia". But it's the same word as "Hallelujah". They're just different transliterations from the Hebrew. More recent printings feel free to modernize the spelling of the 1611 edition and still (rightfully, in my opinion) call themselves the King James Version. For example, here's the original KJV for Matthew 24:37: "But as the dayes of Noe were, so shall also the comming of the Sonne of man be." But if you buy a KJV printed in the last century, it'll say, "But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." It would be captiously picayune to claim that the name "Noah" doesn't occur in that verse. That said, I think most KJVs by and large retain the spelling "Alleluia" rather than modernizing it to "Hallelujah". So the question might be right on a technicality, at least until I find a KJV that uses the more modern spelling. (And I'm betting I could. And then you could claim that's not a "true" KJV and we really don't want to go down that road.)

Oh, and for the record, on the Revelation 9 question that asked what the faces of the locusts were like, I'm giving myself credit for "women". KJV says "men," but the Greek says "anthropoi" rather than "androi"--so "humans" rather than specifically "men"--and the next verse says their hair was "like women's hair." If you rule against me, I'll never watch your show again.

On a more general note, I find the explanation that precedes Round 2 potentially misleading in a couple of ways. The announcer says the experts "have 7 questions to choose from." But as we find out, they don't choose. They draw a number. Secondly, he says the experts have a choice whether to answer or push; and "if they push and their opponent gets it right, their opponent gets the money." When I first heard this, I found myself misunderstanding the word "it". I didn't get that "it" referred to the same-value question in the opponent's category. I thought the expert was pushing the actual question he or she would have been given. I.e. if I draw a 7 and my category is "Flightless Waterfowl," but I push it to Dave Kendall whose category is "Flag-Obsessed Nerds," it sounds as though he'll have to answer the $7 question for "Flightless Waterfowl."

Finally, I've fallen in love with every female expert you've had so far--especially the 'NSync whiz and the Dexter nerd. I know it's probably harder to field female contestants, but it really seems to give a punch in the arm to the game dynamics. I hope that observation doesn't spring from some latent sexism on my part.

And thanks, Opus, for the feedback. We need to know these things, and we're so grateful when people point out what's not working for them! (That said, a number of episodes are shot and edited already, so please don't feel that we aren't paying attention if it takes a while for us to fix what needs fixing.)

Loved one of the categories, not so much on the other two.
Got 7 in Star WarsTrilogy, and surprised myself with in each of the others, all guesses.

SpoilerShow

Flipped the coin right on myrrh/frankincense, picked Mary Magdalene luckily. Dexter: mentioned the first Foghat song I could think of and went "Buffalo Bill" for the killing method.

Only got the 5 pt question in rd 2 (SWT).
Only managed one of the 5 pters in the next round (SWT).
Got the 14 and the 1 in SWT in the final round, and also... well, TPH should get a kick out of this: I had no idea for one of the Dexter questions. My answer seemed ridiculous. I had zero confidence in it. But I had nothing else to offer, so... it's what I said, and it got me 11 points. Now, how many points would it have earned me if I thought it was too dumb to offer, and chose not to?
Anyway,

SpoilerShow

no clue on the grand finale Dexter. Although I can name all the Spock actors in Star Trek III.

Last edited by Paucle on Mon Mar 04, 2013 5:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.